Les Masonson

Managing a Portfolio in a Bear Market

Market timing is the only way to avoid bear markets using simple but effective mechanical trading strategies. Anyone invested in the market from 2000-2002 or from October 2007 to now knows how devasting a crash can be on their hard-earned money. Being down 49% in the S&P 500 in ther former years, and over 40% now is not encouraged buy the unforgiving and useless buy and hold mantra. Investors need to wake up and develop an investing plan NOW!

'Buy and Hold' Is Alive and Well

Your article does not really address the issue of risk of losing money in bear markets. Buy and hold is DEAD, especially with 2 crashes within 8 years. Get real and use a mechanical investing approach that has been backtested.

Does Market Timing Actually Work?

I always find it interesting when I see a piece on market timing that the author very rarely, if ever, shows a table showing the performance "Missing the Worst" days as opposed to just showing "Missing the Best" days. According to Lazlo Birinyi and others it is much preferable and performance is greatly enhanced by missing the worst days. All this aside, the discussion of missing the worst days is totally ridiculous and is just a ploy from the buy and hold crowd to obfuscate the benefits of marketing. There are a number of simple market timing strategies that have worked over decades with less risk than buy and hold.